The Green Snake (Illustrations)

The Green Snake: Life Memories (Illustrations)

This companion volume contains premium color images of the colorized illustrations in the paperback, Black & White edition of “The Green Snake – Life Memories.”

In this captivating autobiography, anthroposophical artist, Margarita Woloschin, paints a vivid picture of her privileged upbringing in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. She records her meetings with the Russian intellectual elite, including Tolstoy, her extensive travels throughout Europe and her marriage to the journalist-poet Max Voloshin.

Instrumental in the introduction of anthroposophy into Russia, Woloschin recounts the construction of the original Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, and its ultimate destruction. She shares her personal memories of Rudolf Steiner and the struggle for meaning in her own turbulent life. Returning to Russia during the First World War, she details the harsh deprivations of the Russian Revolution and its effects on her family and friends.

Set against the extremes of tsarist Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution, this haunting historical memoir is testament to a fascinating and inspirational life.

About the Author

Margarita Woloschin (1882-1973) was born in Moscow, the first child of Wassily Michailovitch Sabaschnikov and Margarita Alexievna Andreyeva. She grew up in a very well-to-do family of diverse cultural interests and early on was determined to become a painter. She first met Rudolf Steiner in 1905 at a lecture in Zurich. After moving to St. Petersburg, she encountered the Russian symbolists and got to know the poet and painter Maximilian Voloschin, whom she married in 1906. She later accompanied Steiner on lecture tours and became a eurythmist, performing in Steiner’s mystery dramas in 1913. When construction of the Goetheanum began, she was invited to help paint the interior. In 1924, she settled in Stuttgart, where she remained active in painting and various anthroposophic activities. Peter Stebbing was born in Copenhagen in 1941 and attended Waldorf schools before studying art in Brighton and London. He moved to the U.S. and graduated from Cornell University with an M.F.A. in painting. Following his first teaching stint at the University of Kansas, Peter began teaching color courses at the City University of New York in 1970. Having begun investigations into Goethe’s color theory, he visited the Gerard Wagner painting school in Dornach, Switzerland. There he began training with Wagner, who asked him to teach in the school. Peter later established a painting school at the Threefold Educational Foundation in Spring Valley, New York. For the past thirty years, he has taught introductory courses in Goethe’s color theory with experiments in England, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S. Since 1992, Peter has been director of the Arteum Painting School in Dornach, Switzerland (www.arteum-malschule.de.vu), and has held a number of exhibitions of his work in Europe and North America. Urs Rüd is a freelance editor living in Arlesheim, Switzerland.